Game Guides, Tips, and Tricks
General * Check the shelter's inventory ("Our Things") frequently to view a summarized list of pro's and con's about your shelter and survivors to the right of the inventory. * Build a radio early and check it every day for weather and news. When you finish checking, leave it on the classic music station for a small morale boost. * It is a good idea to play with pen and paper near to you. Before the scavenge raid check your mental survival plan, "Our Things" menu, crafting requirements and write down what you need. Despite of always-small inventory of your scavenger, you will grab appropriate items in appropriate amounts. Building The rule of thumb when it comes to building is to judge whether you really need the structure or not, and whether if upgrading now or later would mean anything. For example, Chairs and Armchairs are considered low-tier choices compared to more important structures, like the Bed or Stove. * Beds are vital for survival; they allow survivors to rest during the day to recover from being Tired. During daytime, a single bed can remove Tired status from 2 characters. Sleeping in bed at night allow survivors to recover from wounds and illnesses, though the chance of recovery is remarkably low. When the amount of characters gets higher, more beds will have to be built. * Building the Metal Workshop allows your characters to craft tools and weapons, like the crowbar and the Knife. However, the Metal Workshop is not exactly essential, as the items it makes can be easily acquired somewhere else, like at the Garage. * The Stove is also an important addition to your shelter.. Cooked meals are much more filling than raw food and can (presumably) reduce risk of getting sick that would normally result from eating raw food. Cooked meals cannot be stolen in raids unlike their ingredients. * The Rainwater Collector is essential for self-sufficiency when it comes to Clean Water, which is mainly used for cooking, and also for the making of moonshine and for farming. When lots of water is needed, having more than one collector can be useful. Advanced Building The long term goal should be to become self-sufficient or at the very least, to reduce dependence on trading and scavenging as much as possible. This is so that in bad times, your characters can still get by. This is mainly done by becoming self-sufficiency in food management, and being able to create your own medicine and weapons. Of course, the player can still depend on other sources (e.g trading) for resources, though note that due to military fighting or snow, these sources might not be always readily available. * The Radio allows you to prepare for crisis and inflation - cold weather, military fighting, raids, item scarcity, etc. You can even know when the game will end. * Upgrade the Workshop. This is mainly for players who wish to utilize the Tier 3 Workshop's ability to create ammo and fix assault rifles. When the Tier 3 Workshop is made, the player will have access to virtually all the tools, weapons and armor in the game, which makes aggressive attacks easier. However, the Tier 3 Workshop is not really needed if the player would not use advanced weaponry or craft ammo. * Improving your self-sufficiency for food. Building 2 Trap for Small Animals allows for reliable source of Raw Meat, and upgrading your Garden to a Vegetable Garden lets you have a reliable source of vegetables, which prices can inflate during the game. However, note that the materials needed to fully upgrade to a Vegetable Garden can be rather costly. * When you can spare the materials, block all the holes in shelter (requires tier 2 Workshop and three occasions of building) and reinforce the door (requires tier 3 Workshop). This increases the chance of your characters repelling raids. Building all the defensive measures will alert your sleeping characters during the occasion of a raid, reducing the need for guarding. * The Alcohol Distiller and Herbal Workshop lets your characters be self-sufficient in creating medicine and pure alcohol, which are both great for trading. This would allow you to easily have access to any merchant's inventory, especially Franko. Trading * There are several traders with fixed locations on the map. The only trader without one is Franko, the traveling trader that comes to the shelter once every three days. * Franko is a useful source of components, parts and wood - large amount of these items would cost you one or two expensive things, but save a night of routine scavenge with full backpack. * Franko has the steepest prices of all traders, due to him being a travelling merchant. His prices are also the most heavily affected by inflation.. Katia can make things easier, though prices will still be worse than trading with other traders. * If your map has both the Garage and the Market, its possible to visit them on alternate nights, buying bandages, medicine, and alcohol cheaply from the Market and selling them the next night at the Garage. * Tools can be sold after being used with no value penalty, meaning a crowbar used 9 times have the same trade value as a brand new one. * At the Garage, tools are extremely cheap. Consider buying tools from the Garage to sell to others or use them for your own. * Trading with the military around day 35 is essential or during the cigarette and alcohol crash. They will trade 2 bandages/medications for 1 quality cigarette (with Katia). * With one bullet you can take all the food of a trader or the medicine items from another. Another trader that does it is the priest at St. Mary's Church, that will trade all the components you could carry for just two wood. Scavenging * If you plan to visit a location multiple times, spend the first day to clear all hostiles, debris, locked doors and cabinets (bring a weapon, a Shovel, Crowbar, Lockpick and Sawblade). Try to remove as many obstacles as possible, so that on following nights you don't have to bring anything with you and can carry more back. On the second day (or even the first day, if you have the time), move all items you plan to loot to containers near the exit(s). At around 3:30am-4:00am, fill up your backpack and leave. Keep scavenging through until satisfied. * If you do plan on looting around an area where someone lives but don't want to steal, look for the different symbols. The one with a hand grabbing a small pile is steal, and you should know what the loot one looks like. * Theft is a crime even if you weren't detected. That trader you are trying to sell his own goods to will meet you with shotgun fire, despite he has never seen that it was you who looted his "well-protected" underground safe the night before. Sometimes he will simply shoot on sight. * During the Firewood Furniture Run (number one problem in winter) keep in mind that 4 fuel take the same place as 2 wood (=2 fuel). So, chop everything you see with hatchet and take only fuel. Wood can wait. Combat * When you find yourself fighting a NPCs you want to trade with, don't kill them. Only attack them until they start begging for mercy, that should make them stop attacking. * Stealth kills are very effective because they kill enemies with one strike. Simply hide in a closet and wait for the target to walk by. Also enemies that don't see you go in a closet wont see you in the closet * If you plan on clearing out an area, ladders are your friends. Simply find a floor/ roof with just a ladder going to it and draw the enemies to you and kick them down when they try to climb up. I also recommend a hatchet and a shotgun if you do this method, as you can shoot down the ladder hole and they can't shoot back up. * In certain a situation, If you have the rarest weapon in the game the Scoped Assault Rifle, or other guns and if you go to a place (Ruined Villa) with a place to hide and a narrow view of the enemy. You can shoot at enemies and then disappear from sight. Wait for a awhile for them to disperse. If a person is within a range for a stealth kill. Do it then run to cover if you are seen or if not go back again to the hiding place. Entertainment * Books are not just fuel. They are also good antidepressants and when not instructed to perform activities, survivors will often take out a book and read it when sitting on a chair. Most of the time, having just one is enough. * Don't ignore your survivors' addictions unless they are well fed and rested. They can commit suicide because of depression in front of other survivors if their needs are not taken care of. * Booze will cheer up your mass murdering scavenger. They say that egoist Bruno is the best candidate for such actions. * Make sure you have the means to treat depression during cold days and days when you get raided a lot. Do not kill innocence during this time. Economy * Survivors can survive 7-8 days without food, but the Hunger will severely cripple their movement and activities, delay or even prevent them from recovering from sicknesses and injuries, and can negatively affect their mood. * Don't make meat-only Cooked Meals unless you have no other option. Cooking Meat-and-Veggie meals make your supply of raw meat last twice as long, and saves small amounts of water and fuel. Bruno can save you even more resources with his Good Cook perk. * Save Canned Food for winter, when Raw Meat and Vegetables are much harder to come by. * Cooked Meals cannot be stolen. After you've upgraded the Stove, cook as many meals as possible with vegetables to preserve a food supply (you can't upgrade the Stove if there's still Cooked Meals in it). * In some of the observed runs, coffee crisis occurs on day ~10, constant raids occur on days 12~18, cold weather days are 20~30, higher cigarette costs days ~25-30. It is good to prepare for these days (typical summer start with Marko). Special events * Helping the kids with their mom will get you Coffee. This typically happens during the coffee crisis. * Going to the Supermarket with a Knife or Hatchet is a must as there is a drunk soldier that can give you an early assault rifle. Also you get to save a girl that was about to get raped. * See all of the special events. Semi-cheating 'Quit to Menu' * Restart the game if you do not like your party. Some of the best survivors early on are Marko (15 inventory slots), Roman (good fighter), Boris (17 inventory slots), Bruno (Good Cook) and Marin (Handyman). * You can quit any time and restart the day from the morning if you are not satisfied with the scavenging results, your activities during the day, or you're raided and weren't prepared. * When new characters come to join your group, you can restart the day until you get a character that would be most beneficial to your team. For example, if you start in the Summer and want to have Marin ASAP so you can conserve resources in preparation for the Winter months, you can keep restarting your day until Marin comes to your door. Same goes for any character unless you've killed them. * If your survivor dies while scavenging, you can quickly Alt+F4 to kill the game before the next day loads. The game is auto-saved at the beginning of each day. Backup save file * Since the game is auto-saved at the beginning of each day, you can easily make manual save points every couple of days or so by browsing to the save files location on your computer, which is %APPDATA%\11bitstudios\This War Of Mine\iPhoneDefUser. At the beginning of each day, Alt + Tab out and copy the save files into a folder (called "day5" for example). You can then load a specific day by exiting the game first, then copying back the backed up files. For the Steam version, the save files are located in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Steam\userdata\STEAM ID\282070\remote (you might also want to turn off Cloud). 'Exploit: Anti-raid container' * Note that this exploit was patched in late November 2014. It is no longer possible to put items inside containers in the shelter. * It is possible to put things in a specific container in the shelter instead of keeping them in the "invisible" container accessed by clicking "Our things". Pick one container and keep at least one item in it so that it remains lootable. Before ending the day, put everything except equipment and weapons inside the container (so that the characters on guard have something do defend themselves with). When a new day begins, have one character access that container, click "Grab All" then put back an item (important!). Caveat: In some games, the pile may spontaneously disappear in the night during night 21, causing you to lose everything in it upon loading the next day. This trick has many uses: ** Prevent raiders from stealing items. ** Prevent characters on guard from using ammo. ** Prevent smokers or coffee drinkers from using up cigarettes or coffee beans. Cheating We do not influence cheating of some sorts, but those who do there is a problem with having infinite amount of items. It crashes '''the game. Using cheats are purely for testing purposes. The game's difficulty is its shine. * '''CheatHappens has a paid trainer at their website that boasts several features, although people have complained about crashes and various issues. * MrAntiFun's free trainer will give you infinite items, which will not disappear, however this trainer often causes game crashes and comes with a lot of temperamental conditions on when it can be used and if you can scavenge later. See the link for full details on how to avoid crashes when using this trainer, however here are some quick tips: ** Be careful clicking too fast or too many times will crash it. Limit yourself to at most 30 duplications at a time. ** For better efficiency, use right mouse clicks as that will duplicate 10 times per click. ** Do not use this trainer on day one (and maybe not even day two) as it will usually cause a crash. ** Only duplicate resources and trade goods, not equipment or tools. ** Do not scavenge any night that you've used a trainer during the day on. ** To minimize crashes, leave an item in one of the storage areas in the shelter and deposit your duplicated items into it before the day ends. If you no longer have any storage areas remaining, you can craft an axe and chop down cupboards to create one. Try to remember not to take the last item out of the storage area if you want to continue duplicating items. * Shinkansen's''' '''cheat table at cheatengine.org can also be used as a free trainer. This trainer can pause time progression and allows you to craft items without expending resources (including items that you shouldn't be allowed to craft, like more resources). In this way, you can also duplicate resources without any risk of crashing. This trainer is more difficult to use, however, and may require you to watch the tutorial videos first. Category:Tips